


Becoming Doc (and becoming Hud again).

by wollstonecraft



Category: Cars (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Doc Hudson is alive (OF COURSE), Doc is an unreliable narrator of sorts, Everyone loves Doc Hudson, Guido and Luigi are a couple, Humanized Cars, I mean I love this man but he's just so BLIND, Internal Monologue, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Really there's a lot of angst here, Sally Carrera is amazing, Self-Hatred, no beta we die like men
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-27
Updated: 2019-05-27
Packaged: 2020-03-20 03:40:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,640
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18984502
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wollstonecraft/pseuds/wollstonecraft
Summary: You won three Piston cups. You were the Fabulous Hudson Hornet, the champion for all time. You had a thousand of boys down on their knees just because you were you.Suddenly, you didn’t have anything left except for a broken heart, a bunch of empty cups and a thousand scars.(On which Hud becomes Doc, and how Doc becomes Hud again).





	Becoming Doc (and becoming Hud again).

**Author's Note:**

  * For [objectlesson](https://archiveofourown.org/users/objectlesson/gifts).



> HEWWO, IT'S YOUR FAVORITE CARS STAN, NICO.
> 
> There isn't really a lot to say on this work, except that it's my first time writing something long in this fandom, and that it's my first fanfic ever entirely written on english (I'm from Argentina, so, this isn't my first language). ALSO, this is unbeated because I wanted it to be a surprise, but I promise my next works will be (most likely) beated. SORRY FOR THE MISSPELLINGS EVERYONE. Still, I hope you enjoy this, is pre-relationship, enjoy the slowburn ride.

You won three Piston cups. You were the Fabulous Hudson Hornet, the champion for all time. You had a Fabulous embroidery jacket, a shiny blue car, and the most heartbreaker cocky smile. You had a thousand of boys down on their knees just because you were _you_ , and even if you were scared to admit out loud that you were _gay_ (and you always used the term queer as a way to cope with what you really are), you felt like you were on the top of the world. Like nothing could ever take you down.

Then, the ’54 crash happened.

Losing a season was a bad thing, but it was something you could live up with. You could sew yourself back together like a piece of clothing; pretend you were still the perfect racer, the perfect person, the perfect winner. Losing a season, a year, was nothing in comparison to what you could do after you get back out there. You were amazing, and you knew it. You knew you had a lot left to show, to do, _to be_.

The rest of racers didn’t seem to think the same thing.

Suddenly, you were history. You didn’t have anything left except for a broken heart, a bunch of empty cups, a destroyed Hudson Hornet, and a thousand scars. The crash broke your body, your leg, your knee that now bumps, but the “ _you’re history_ ” broke your heart into a million pieces.

How could you explain to the rest of the group that you couldn’t stand being there, in Thomasville, watching the new rookies stand in the same place where you used to stand, to race, to scream at the top of your lungs? Telling it to Louise or River seemed like a punch in the face, even worst that the actual punches you used to get after sucking a boy’s dick in the back of a race car, but you couldn’t even stand the idea of talk about it with Smokey, your very own (ex) crew chief. It seemed unspeakable, just like saying “I’m gay” was unspeakable, even when you were on your knees about to suck a dick. Stuff like that was unspeakable, still are, you think, but facing the truth, thing is, that stuff was way worse back in the 50s.

So, you didn’t say anything. You grabbed a few things and disappeared into thin air. You were still fast on the top of your game, so it was kind of easy; the first part, at least. Disappearing was something you could do, Fabulous Hudson Hornet no more, third times Piston cup winner nonetheless. But after surviving a crash like that, even when it left you with a really bad leg and pieced back together like a handmade doll, you couldn’t just _die_. You wanted to, though, but it felt like it was not time yet. Like you had something else to do, even when you were driving without a real destination, even when you were escaping of your old self, just like Sally Carrera would do years later, ending in the same way you did.

You get stuck in Radiator Springs, and the thing is, you actually love it there.

It’s different, from Thomasville, from the racing world, from your fast and furious life, from everything you used to know. But it still works somehow. Maybe that’s why it works, because no one there knows about your past, they have no idea who you are, you’re just the weird guy who stopped at Flo’s because you needed gas on your car, and a coffee between your chest and your back. It’s something even funny, now that you think more about it, because somehow, those folks made you want to stay there and never look back.

So, that’s what you do.

You know you always wanted to help people, even when you were a racer and you had the whole world at your feet instead of over your shoulders, so you start med school again, after you dropped in second year back in Thomasville, and this time you actually finish it. It’s the first time since the crash that you’re actually proud of something you’ve accomplished, first time in years you can say that you’re proud of yourself.

Slowly, without realizing it, the nickname “Hud” seems more and more like a memory, more like an old dream that something you know it actually happened. And even more slowly, Hud starts fading to be replaced with the new doctor in town, the owner of the Radiator Springs clinic, Doc Hudson.

It’s weird, but in a good way. You become close and close with all the Radiator Springs folks, starting with Flo and Ramone, and of course the Sheriff, probably the only cop you’ve ever liked on your whole existence (as you do), but eventually moving on with the rest. Even Mater, who likes to act like a kid even when he’s thirty years old and who’s always covered in cars’ rust and stuff, is a person you like to keep close. Even Luigi and Guido, even if you sometimes envy them, envy what they have, all the things you know you don’t have any more and you’ll not have again; you like to be close to them, because Radiator Springs is like that. A cozy old town, who once was at its peak, and now has lost any kind of potential and it’s just surviving because it has to. The town reminds you of yourself, the old, grumpy doctor who got saved by all the folks who live here. It parallels you more than you’d like, _more than you’d want_.

Even, though, as more time passes, you stop thinking about Hud. He stays close, but far away at the same time, locked in your garage with a lot of newspapers, old photographs, the three piston cups, and what’s left of your precious Hudson Hornet.

You become the town’s judge, and that’s surprising even for you, because you didn’t even want to be the judge. Still, the entire town voted yes, and it warmed your heart in a way that you probably didn’t felt in years. A little after that, Sally Carrera appears at your doorstep, with a broken Porsche and a fever of 41 degrees, and she crawls into your medical clinic as she crawls into your heart. And she stays there, not in the way the rest of men your age would love a woman like her, but in a way where you can even tell she’s the closest you’ve had to a best friend since you left Thomasville, and Smokey, and River, Louise and Junior back with it. That’s one more reason, of a thousand, on why Hud keeps fading, fading, and fading. You even forget about your past most of the time, except on those lonely nights when you are around your garage and you seem like you are chasing a spirit, but the rest of the time, when you’re around people, when you’re in a courtroom working with Sally, or when you’re just hanging around at Flo’s at the first hour of the morning, you feel like you belong there. Like you’ve always been Doc Hudson. Like being the Fabulous Hudson Hornet was just _a fever dream_ , and not something that actually happened.

Or at least until _the infamous Lightning McQueen_ drives into your town, leaves tire tracks of a red Corvette everywhere, and destroys your whole road.

When you step in your courtroom, you’re expecting a little crazy criminal that you can just throw in jail and forget about him. You’re expecting something that you can handle, since it’s been like fifty years since you first encountered Radiator Springs, and at this point, you feel like you can handle anything in the town. Fix anything in the town, like Mater likes to say. _The last thing you’re expecting is **Lightning McQueen**_.

You get on your seat, and you look at him for the first time. And you feel like he’s punching you in the face for the first time too (he’d do that a lot more times in the future, always metaphorically, because he could never hurt you like that), because he’s everything you dreamed of since you were twenty. The perfect definition of a past that haunts you, but you never expected to find again in this old town, forgotten by god. The messy red hair, the kitten blue eyes, his face covered in dirt, and that red luminous jacket with the 95 in the back, that kind of jacket that you’d recognize everywhere, because you used to have one exactly like that.

It hurts just to look at him. At how he _shines_ , how he’s _brighter than the sun_.

It’s not until he says your name for the first time, in front of you, that you realize you’ve lost. That you lost since he stepped a foot in the town, that you can’t handle how he makes you feel. He doesn’t even realize, you notice, but when he pronounces the words “ _Doc Hudson_ ”, all you can hear is the first syllable of your name.

“Hud”.

 _Hud, Hud, Hud, Hud, Hud_.

He throws you on a loop. One time, two times, three times. He wins everyone’s hearts, _yours the first_ , even if he doesn’t think so, and when he drives off with it, followed by all the paparazzi, once again, you realize you’ve lost.

Becoming Doc was the easy part of the process.

Going back, after fifty years of telling yourself not to, _becoming **Hud** again_, just because _that kid needed you_?

This is the real deal.

And even if it’s hard, because you know what’s going to happen, because you know how that kid makes your heart go three times faster than it should… _you can’t wait to get hurt again._

**Author's Note:**

> THANK YOU SO MUCH IF YOU MADE IT THIS FAR.
> 
> A LITTLE COMMENT AND A LITTLE KUDO MAKES A CARS STAN HAPPY.


End file.
